Month: January 2011

I’ve been thinking recently about what I want to do this year, and how I want to live my life. I know, I know, this is typically New Year’s resolution stuff, but I like to take my sweet time with this thing! Who likes the resolutioners crowding the gym all January? NO ONE, that’s who. And did the first week of January really need another blog post about all my goals for the year? NOPE.

Instead of coming up with a big list of stuff at the start of the year, diving in headfirst and flaming out wildly, I decided to start small, with just one personal goal for January. One personal personal goal that is so personal that I don’t want to share it, but I will say I’ve been sticking to it and plan to keep it up for the rest of the year my entire life.

For February I’ve decided my goal will be to make better food choices, not just for myself, but for my family. I’ve actually already started doing this: I’ve been cooking more meals instead of going out or ordering in, I’ve been diversifying my meal plans, and I’ve been buying more nutritious foods. On Saturday night Taylor and I had soup & salad for dinner instead of lasagna. Yesterday we had delicious sandwiches instead of greasy burgers. I’ve even had two meals so far today (I often do nothing but snack on junk until dinnertime):

steel-cut oats with blackberries, clover-alfalfa honey & skim milk
Old picture but this is still my favorite thing to make for breakfast. One of my upcoming goals is to buy all the blackberries at the farmer’s market this summer so I can freeze them and eat this year-round without having to spend $6 on a tiny amount of berries from Mexico. The honey is also from the farmer’s market, which seriously better start soon because I’m almost out.

scrambled eggs, skinny bagel, pea shoot salad with balsamic vinegar
I scrambled my eggs with skim milk and topped them with fresh ground red/white/black pepper and pink Himalayan salt. How great are these skinny bagels? They have all the surface area of a regular bagel, so you can easily make bagelwiches or just slather them with cream cheese, but you don’t get that I-ate-to-much-bread-and-now-I’m-pregnant-with-a-bread-babby feeling from them. If you are a calorie counting person (which I’m not) then you know regular bagels have three or four hundred calories, whereas these have only 140. Not bad! The salad has grape tomatoes, carrots, mini cucumbers and pea shoots with a little balsamic vinegar. I found the pea shoots in the ~specialty produce~ section and thought I’d give them a try. They’re really good- sort of sprouty, sort of peapody, light and crisp. Even Sym likes them, and she can be really picky.

Sym asked me today if I could get her a cinnamon bun while I was out (I went shopping to cheer myself up), but I thought it would be more fun if we made our own! After some quick googling I chose the first recipe on this page because it didn’t require yeast (we didn’t have time to let dough rise before her dad came to pick her up). I modified it slightly by:
a) not fully reading the instructions and putting in too much butter
b) making a simple glaze with confectioner’s sugar & milk instead of cream cheese icing
c) dividing the dough in half to make 18 smaller, Symmie-sized buns which I baked in muffin trays

Aprons on, ready to bake! Sym didn’t wear her apron that matches mine; she says that one is only for cupcakes.

Sym was mostly in charge of DSi-ing.

They look pretty good! I mixed the glaze up in my gravy boat (which has never been used for gravy) so I could pour it on the buns easily. I sifted the sugar first, and started with about half a cup, then added milk by half-tablespoons and more sugar by heaping tablespoons until it reached the right consistency. You need a lot of sugar and only a teeny-tiny bit of milk for this.

They look REALLY GOOD. But what does Symmie think?

I think I can chalk these up as a success! Of course, after making them I have a little bit of a situation on my hands…

ARGH. Now I really regret not doing the dishes after dinner last night. Whoopsies!

Inspired by this Slate article and the discovery that I had both chocolate AND peanut butter chips in the cupboard, I baked cookies. Beautiful cookies. I need to keep the illusion of a perfect life alive!

These might seriously be the prettiest cookies I’ve ever made. Usually I’m too lazy/unwilling to sticky up my hands to roll little dough balls and just plop spoonfuls willy-nilly, which bake all deformed and ugly and usually end up sticking together. But NOT TODAY. Today I rolled the dough balls and spaced them out properly and even rotated my baking sheets. Add this to my recent spate of actually cooking dinner and I’m like a homemaking machine! Now if I could only do all this while keeping up with the laundry… Oh and I should have taking pictures while I was baking because I used my matching M-Cup Matroyshka measuring cups and M-Spoons Matryoshka measuring spoons, how whimsical and precious of me.

Idk if you guys know, but when I link to books and stuff (mostly books) on Amazon.com, it’s through the Affliates program (I do have a ~disclaimer~ about it on my bio page and all my readinglistpages). What this means is if someone clicks those links and buys something, I earn a sweet nickel or two. Well, last night I got my first payment from the program- after only IDK A YEAR PRACTICALLY I got this sweet giftcard for $11.57.

I applied it to my account and it will cover the cost of a book for my Kindle. Which I’ll then post about here, and someone will click the link and buy it and thus the process begins anew.

ALSO last night I sold my pastel rainbow micro bunting on etsy (get your own here, it’s only $2.50 so you really have no excuse).
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Pastel rainbow bunting made from 1″ recycled origami paper pennants on 16 1/2″ of 1/4″ gold satin ribbon. I made this on a whim and now I don’t know what to do with it, like if I should bother putting it on etsy EDIT: I did. It’s pretty adorable though.

Last night I found myself really, really wanting to make something. I didn’t, which is why I made the bunting, I guess. I still the creativity itch, so I think I might start making the Tuxedo Kamen doll for Sym. I’m also going to make a Valentine card kit for her, with animal and/or fruit shapes and associated Valentine puns.

Anyway this week has been draaaaaaaaggggggging. I swear, I’ve woken up thinking it was Friday every day. But it’s Wednesaday, so at least the week is half over, right? Right.

Did you guys know I’ve been making dinner again? It’s true! In addition to last Wednesday’s beef stew, there was tacos last Monday, pasta with spinach and tomatoes on Friday and a very late breakfast-for-lunch on Saturday afternoon. Last night I continued this unprecedented streak of homemaking with this fine meal:

Orange-ginger salmon, carmelized carrots and the world’s best mashed potatoes but FOR REAL this time because I swear these were the BEST mashed potatoes I’ve ever made, and that is saying A LOT.

The carrots I sliced and tossed in a pan with butter and brown sugar. I cooked them over medium heat for about ten minutes, then low for another ten.

The mashed potatoes were made with russet potatoes, peeled for once (which is something I’m not good at, learning to peel potatoes might be my Everest). While they drained I sizzled some butter & minced garlic in the bottom of the pot, mashed the potatoes in with a little Himalayan pink salt, added a heaping spoon of sour cream and then remashed for the smoothest potatoes ever (lumps are for jerks).

For the salmon (a wild Sockeye fillet), I mixed orange juice and zest (actually clementine, but close enough) with minced garlic and fresh grated ginger, then baked it in parchment. It took ten minutes longer to cook than expected, and at first I was livid because I thought my sides would be ruined (I think Christina at The Imperial March knows what I’m talking about!) but it turned out to be a boon- the carrots got even more carmelized-y and the potatoes got a nice crispiness on the bottom. Yum!